Recalling the Socceroos’ Asian debut

Socceroo fans have very fond memories of breaking our 32-year drought in qualifying for the 2006 World Cup.

But it’s worth reminding ourselves that we actually qualified for that World Cup officially as a member of the Oceania confederation.

By the time we got past Uruguay in November 2005, we had already been accepted into the Asian confederation (perhaps yet to be rubber stamped), and had actually played one Asian Cup qualifier prior to the commencement of the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

For this reason, I refer to the 2007 Asian Cup as our Asian debut.

Socceroo fans will recall it as a baptism of fire as we battled through most games in the suffocating humidity of South-East Asia (Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand were joint hosts that year).

Before we take a look at some of the highlights of the 2007 Asian Cup, it’s worth revisiting some of our qualifiers.

We were in a group with three Middle Eastern countries: Bahrain, Kuwait and Lebanon.

Our first official match within the Asian confederation was against Bahrain, in February 2006, played at the Bahrain National Stadium before 2,500 fans.

Bahrain opened the scoring at the 35th, but three second-half goals gave us our first official win in Asia.

Graham Arnold and Johan Neeskens filled in for Guus Hiddink, who was still the national coach but had European club commitments. By the time the Asian cup came along the following year, Arnie had taken over as the national coach.

Soon after this first match, the political reality of being in Asia hit home when Lebanon pulled out of the qualifying group because of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

The Socceroos’ first official match on home soil as part of Asia was in September 2006, played at the SFS in front of 32,622 fans. Australia won 2-0.

The following month, a stronger Socceroos team failed 2-0 in Kuwait, with the heat factor being the main culprit.

The Socceroos finished their first Asian campaign with a decent showing in Sydney against Bahrain with an almost full-strength team, winning 2-0. Mark Bresciano’s goal, a copy book overhead strike, is worth remembering.

Almost a year later, the Socceroos ventured forth to their first Asian Cup (played in July of 2007), where they played their opening group games in the heat and humidity of Bangkok.

Our Group A opponents included Thailand (joint host), Oman, and eventual winners Iraq.

Our first ever Asian Cup match was against minnows Oman, and oh man, did they give us plenty to worry about. Oman opened the scoring in the 32nd, and the Socceroos were heading for a certain defeat before Timmy Cahill popped up in the dying seconds to earn a crucial point. The goal came after two strikes were blocked, one after the other, with the keeper’s block on Bresh’s low shot falling to Cahill who smashed it in from close range.

At this point, we may have thought we had put the worst possible result behind us, but much worse was in store five days later against eventual winners, war-torn Iraq. The Socceroos were lucky to go into the rooms at halftime with a 1-1 scoreline, but the wheels fell off well and truly in the second half as Iraq were handed two goals on a platter.

My memory of this second half is of the Australian defenders giving the ball away in dangerous positions time after time, with the worst offender being the captain, Lucas Neill. For Iraq’s third, Karrar Jassim scored the easiest goal he would ever score in his career.

We were able to bounce back in our third game against joint-host Thailand with an easy 4-0 win, but were knocked out in the quarter final by Japan on penalties.

Iraq would go on to defeat Saudi Arabia in the final with a 1-0 result, although I thought the Saudis were the superior team with some fantastic strikers, including their captain Yasser Saeed Al-Qahtani and the pint-sized Malek Mouath, who was an excitement machine, scoring a double to help sink Japan in the semi-finals.

Speaking of characters, it’s hard to go past the delightfully named Bambang Pamungkas, who managed to excite the Indonesian fans in the group games.

I’m not sure if this counts as a highlight, but I also recall South Korea earning three successive nil-all draws in the knock-out stages on the way to claiming third spot, coached by none other than Pim Verbeek. In hindsight, that shouldn’t really surprise us.

Another favourite from that tournament was Uzbekistan, who in my eyes, were right up there with the Saudis in terms of their overall quality. In fact, they were unlucky to lose to the Saudis in the quarter finals when one of their goals was incorrectly ruled offside.

Maksim Shatskikh, at the time playing with Dynamo Kyiv, was a huge presence up front for the Uzbeks. He was on the end of the some fantastic service from the electrifying left-back Vitaliy Denisov, now playing with Lokomotiv Moscow.

Both the Saudis and Uzbeks have not really lived up to the promise they displayed nearly eight years ago, so here’s hoping they can both make a revival in this Asian cup and push the current powers.